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Why you should choose me over Larry

As I sit in my hometown of San Luis Obispo this week, recovering from knee surgery under the loving care of my family, I’ve had some time to ponder what’s next. Burning Man will dominate the rest of my summer – between promoting my book (The Tribes of Burning Man) at more than a dozen events and seeing to my own playa preparations – so I’ve been thinking about what I want to say about it during this interesting point in its cultural evolution.
Particularly once I learned that my next book-related event (Tuesday night at the venerable Mechanics Institute) is on the same night as Larry Harvey’s appearance at the Commonwealth Club, I’ve been contemplating why people should come to see me instead of the event’s founder and working to develop a program that will validate people’s choice.
I have a lot of respect for Larry, and I’m thankful that he was so gracious in sharing his time and insights throughout the seven years that I worked on my book. His comments and perspective pepper The Tribes of Burning Man and help make it a definitive look at this culture’s modern era when combined with my other reportage.
But there’s a reason that I’ve had a hard time getting Larry and the Borg’s help in promoting my book and events, and it’s because my book isn’t really about them, much to the chagrin of some of its board members (including one who told me she is “ambivalent” about my book and has blocked previously promised access to even regional promotional lists).
My book isn’t about Burning Man per se, but about the wonderfully vast, infinitely creative, remarkably resourceful, and well-developed culture that has formed up around the event. That has always been more interesting to me than what happens on the playa or in the Borg’s headquarters, and that’s where I’ve spent my time and energy since 2004.
Between embedding myself with art crews like the Flaming Lotus Girls and Flux Foundation, working with Burners Without Borders during its evolution on the Gulf Coast, delving deeply into Opulent Temple and other nightlife tribes, and interviewing the ground level builders of myriad other camps and collectives, I guess you can say that I’ve developed a populist, bottom-up view of this culture.
I can peer through the top-down view that Larry and the Borg have, and they certainly do understand the culture they’ve helped spawn. But there are unmistakable blind spots and biases to their perspective that regularly cause problems, frustrations, and unnecessary defections among the burner masses, as I and others have chronicled over the years.
It’s a common problem for institutions of all kinds, as I’ve learned over 20 years as a newspaper journalist covering political, corporate and nonprofit organizations. Even those that derive their power and influence from representing great masses of people tend to develop groupthink and hubris, believing they know better than the people they are supposed to be serving.
But Burning Man is a culture formed directly by the volunteer efforts and the communal ethos of myriad groups and individuals, moreso than any I’ve covered. And as the Borg begins a transition of control over Burning Man to a new nonprofit with a hand-picked board, I’ve been publicly urging the Borg to seek and heed input from the greater burner community about governance and other issues, so far to little avail.
So, why should you come see me on Tuesday night, rather than Larry Harvey? Well, if you’ve never heard Larry’s perspective, maybe you shouldn’t. He’s an interesting guy, a big thinker, and a good speaker. But there are parts of this culture he simply doesn’t care to understand, such as sound camps, which he proudly says he has never visited.
If you want to understand what drives people to devote months of their lives each year to building Black Rock City, and to learn how they and their communities are affected by that experience, that’s a good reason to come see me. It’s what interests me the most, it’s what I’ve studied, and it’s what we’ll talk about on Tuesday (in a 150-year-old institution created by the builders of cities) and at my events thereafter.
I’ve developed some good insights into what makes this culture tick, and more importantly, I know that there’s still so much that I don’t know. So I hope that you’ll come and offer your thoughts, experiences, and perspective. Because the best cultures deserve the best conversations.